Question: how have women, and the issues critical to them, featured in the federal election campaign so far? Answer: google it, mate! Just kidding, I already did, and the search results show coverage of derivative “gotcha” questions about how you define our half of the species, followed by polls showing no change to Morrison’s chronically low support among female voters.
And let’s face it, why would women have a nice thing to say about a man who relies on his wife to understand basic concepts like rape is bad, or about his merry band of misogynist and handsy representatives?
Indeed, the government’s inability to get pretty much anything right when it comes to women has meant we are struck in the same place we were at the last election: unable to move on from basic deficits like the numerically few women on the conservative side, even as we watch those numbers dwindle as the few that are there complain, resign or both because of aforementioned issues with misogyny and handsiness, with lashings of gender-based bullying for good measure.
What would it have been nice for the government to have done during its decade in office? What do Australian women want? The same things we’ve always wanted and are still pushing successive governments to care enough to achieve.
We want to be safe from discrimination, violence, and gender-based harassment and humiliation at school, home, work and on the street. We want access to quality child and elder care, and to be paid and have the same opportunities as the bloke sitting next to us even if — gasp! — we’re working part-time. We want a publicly funded universal health care system in more than name — one that includes dental health. We want to have control of our bodies from cradle to grave and to avoid being demeaned by having to explain once again why our state or federal representative doesn’t have a place in the personal and private decisions we make about our fertility and the time and manner of our passing.
Has the government delivered on these things? With the possible exception of sexual harassment — an issue the Coalition had no choice but to face after its failed attempt at covering up the alleged workplace rape of Brittany Higgins — the answer is no. Which is almost certainly why women’s support for the Coalition remains in the doldrums. According to the latest Ipsos poll, just 29% support Morrison, down from 44% at this same time in the 2019 campaign.
Twenty-one-year-old Emily Lawton sums up the situation nicely, which is that anyone else would be better than Morrison. Why? Because when it comes to women, he just doesn’t care.
Labor does better on issues of particular concern to women, almost certainly because there are more women in its ranks to determine priorities. This near 50% representation of women in the caucus didn’t just happen but was the result of a hard-won victory by Labor women to set targets for female representation. Indeed, having started as an aspiration for just 35% of the parliamentary party to be female in the 1990s, the odds are that their 2025 target of 50% will be met early.
That’s why Labor has a policy to make childcare more affordable and is running hard on a minimum wage hike, a policy that will disproportionally benefit women because — sad face — too many of us are in minimum wage jobs. Albanese has committed to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full during his first term — an Aboriginal initiative that Morrison has shamefully let languish — laying the ground work for a national voice for Aboriginal women to be heard.
But it’s not all good news. There’s nothing from Labor about the terrifying rise in homelessness among educated women over 55, nor any incentive for gender equitable parenting in our current leave entitlement. Although the opposition spokesperson for women Tanya Plibersek did join Greens senator for women Larissa Waters in accepting an invitation to debate the issues: one that the actual Minister for Women Marise Payne snarkily rejected.
What about the minors? Both the Greens and Reason Australia are dominated by strong feminist women, and the Greens have a women’s policy to die for. It even explicitly mentions the right of rural women to have the same reproductive rights as women in the rest of the nation, including access to safe, legal and free termination.
Reason doesn’t have a woman’s policy per se, and while it certainly covers off on equal pay and domestic violence, it doesn’t match the Greens in promising address of the legal lacuna that allows Tinder swindlers and damaged men to destroy the lives of women and children through coercive control. Though, given time, it almost certainly will as both Fiona Patten and Jane Caro are across the issue.
The bottom line is that when women are at the table, and they act as women for women, real outcomes for Australian women can be achieved. The women in Parliament learned that through their cross-party support for removing the effective ban on RU486 — the abortion drug — in 2006.
Sadly, we haven’t seen such enervating cross-party cooperation along gender lines since. But with 70% of young women in support of unrestricted abortion rights, and the voices of male apologists and anti-feminists like Bettina Arndt and Babette Francis fading, the time for the sisterhood to act like one and reap the benefits could be now.
This all makes sense when we remember where Scummo and a lot of his mates come from.
Simone de Beauvoir summed it up with her thesis that Womens bodies are media through which men transmit property
This make abortion law, access to contraception etc comprehensible
What also follows from this is that rape isn’t illegal because it is a nasty thing to do to a woman. It is proscribed because it is a property crime against a man – her husband, father or brother
When we remember this it is easy enough to understand Scummo’s track record
Harsh but fair enough Andrew, and governments will not get on top of the problem while they plagued by God-botherers
Great piece, Leslie.
With virtually no exception, comments from males on the two articles re women’s rage and it’s manifestation during this recent period of reckoning have proven that patronising condescension and dismissal of our concerns are not exclusive to politicians. Many men continue to trivialise, belittle and taunt with utter abandon. No wonder we’re angry.
There were exceptions, Catherine – and they were attacked for it. Sneers about hanging with the cool girls and such and in a way, that’s worse than attacks on women. Far worse.
My 30 something son loathes the “not all men” bit. He acknowledges it’s not all men, but he can read and add up, so he realises it’s got to be a hell of a lot of ‘em, several of whom must be bellowing “not all men” all the while. Ask him who’s responsible for “women’s issues” and he’ll tell you it’s men- ALL OF THEM, especially on the days his mother or wife have been sexually assaulted at work, yet again.
Leslie thank you for this article.
I was just looking at the polling from the 2019 election, in which 41% of female voters supported the Coalition, while 33% of female voters supported Labour, and 13% supported Greens.
You’ll doubtless recall that the Labour platform was stronger on womens’ issues than it is today. Yet there simply wasn’t a significant gender-based difference in support for Coalition and Labour at that time: the male support was virtually identical at 42% Coalition, 33% Labour. The only difference was Greens, where the male support trailed at 8%. Even support for One Nation and Independents were roughly at parity at 3% and 3-4% respectively.
My so-what question for you then is this:
We agree that women’s issues are national, intergenerational and life-shaping, and that there’s no election in which they don’t deserve earnest attention from all serious political parties.
Why then must they always be reported from a left-wing perspective when they are actually humanist issues, and when it should be obvious in election after election that female electors are taking other matters into consideration too?
Or to put it another way, aren’t you crippling the discussion by embedding left wing ideologies into apolitical humanistic issues?
And do you think the largely female teal candidates will share your mistake?
My impression is that the main issues being promoted by the teal candidates are climate change action and integrity in government.
C.A.D wrote: My impression is that the main issues being promoted by the teal candidates are climate change action and integrity in government.
Some basic additional research would turn up the following from Zali Steggall for instance:
And here’s Kylea Tink:
Or how about Allegra Spender?
So no: playing to a centre-right electorate does not mean being indifferent to womens’ issues.
(Unless you’re Leslie, who can’t imagine humanistic concerns ever supporting centre-right politics.)
In what way is the article “from a left-wing perspective”? It merely describes the factual differences in representation and policy that currently exist among the parties.
And by the way, nowadays it’s the Labor party. Labour is the current Pommie version.
Salamander asked: In what way is the article “from a left-wing perspective”?
In its implication that women who have already voted for Scott Morrison’s leadership in 2019 (some 41% of all eligible female voters, or about 3.3 million women) were all deludedly or ignorantly acting against self-interest.
In case you missed it, here’s the quote, which was also precised in the title:
Presumably in 2019, 41% of women did have something nice to say about Morrison, probably on a range of issues that are more important to them than they are to Leslie.
If a male journalist were to suggest that 3.3 million women didn’t know what they were doing politically in 2019, it would rightly be criticised as patronising and bigoted.
Yet the author’s position is that she knows today better than 3.3 million women did in 2019 what was good for them.
That’s clearly not the case. Rather it’s true that she doesn’t like the Prime Minister’s politics or his treatment of women.
In fairness I don’t either, but that doesn’t make the argument sound.
Leslie has been lazy and bigoted here. If she genuinely cares about womens’ issues then there are some 3.3 million Australian women whose interests she needs to understand and respect more than she presently does.
The Brittany Higgins story broke AFTER the 2019 election, Ruv, in February 2021 and LNP voting women weren’t impressed. They’re the reason for Morrison’s “women problem” and the reason so many of those Teals in Blue Ribbon Liberal seats are women and have a chance of getting in.
Kathy wrote: The Brittany Higgins story broke AFTER the 2019 election, Ruv.
Yes — and Morrison’s cack-handed mishandling of that and every other women’s issue has rightly lost him a good whack of female voters. That’s not in dispute.
But that’s also not Leslie’s argument. Here it is again:
According to Leslie, no sensible women will vote for Morrison because Leslie knows better than they do what’s good for them.
Which of course is ideological bigotry refuted by even a casual glance at the data. Of the 44% female support Morrison got in 2019, 29% were still with him as at approval polls on May-9 — so they’ll still have nice things to say, as might some of the 15% who previously supported him, even if they now want a different leader.
Leslie has decided that she knows what all women want and think and feel. Apparently without any form of empirical data: knowledge by revelation lets her homogenise all women and strip them of nuance and independent thought.
A left-wing ethicist demanding respect for women won’t respect a woman who doesn’t agree with her politically?
The teals are doing a better job than that.
Ah! I see where you’re coming from now- and you’re right: they’re not “women’s” issues, they are indeed human issues and should be above and beyond politics. Sadly, they are not. We’re a little over half the population and do all the low paying jobs like caring for the children, elderly, disabled and sick that nobody values or wants to pay good money for because it’s “women’s work”.
I think if you looked at the demographic of women who still support Morrison inspite of it all, you’ll find your answer.
I’ll go out on a limb and suggest they might be of a religious persuasion that teaches good girls and women simply don’t get raped because they simply don’t put themselves in that position.
They are safely at home under their father’s eye until to the day he gives them away in marriage.
Some of these ladies of faith may abhor the LNP’s treatment of their gender, but they’re willing to overlook it and vote for him because he’s promised to bring in the RDA and maybe then he’ll manage to ban “murdering babies”, too.
Many of the other women will be older, indoctrinated with decades of “she was asking for it” because of the way she was dressed, flirting etc. Many of these older women couldn’t care less about younger women anyway, so long as they get their SMSF retiree perks- negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions, partial pensions, health care cards, fixed deeming rate for the next couple of years so the worst of what’s coming doesn’t bite them so hard, subsidised private health care and the big basket of goodies they were promised first by LNP this time round.
The way these older women see it, they went through it and survived, it was part of the job, the way of the world, and these whining young women should take a teaspoon of cement and harden up. Seriously. I’ve heard it said more than once.
Other women Liberal voters will be younger, but wealthy. They’re the ones the Teals are after- wealthy women who are all for soft social progressiveness and climate change action, providing it doesn’t hurt their hip pocket nerve.
People will overlook a lot of warts when issues close to their hearts are involved- and women are no exception- ask the the Donald.
So yes, there are reasons women will still vote for the LNP. They may not be voting for Morrison, mind you. They may loathe Morrison, but love their wallets. And those self-interested reasons will seem perfectly reasonable to them.
They will not seem reasonable to the rest of us, though- particularly since Labor has matched pretty well every bribe issued to them.
I do agree with you that dividing women on “reasonable” and “unreasonable” lines probably won’t help anything but the status quo, but it’s certainly not confined to the left and it’s hard to establish common ground when “class” has become the filthiest word in the Australian language. If the word is used, it’s used by predominantly by the right as a sledgehammer to hit the left.
What would you have women do with their anger, Ruv? How would you have them express it? Shut up, cop it and wait for change didn’t work. Softly, softly didn’t work.
What would you have low income earners do with their anger? Low income earners are overwhelmingly women. Educated women over 50 are the fastest growing homeless group in the country.
So much advice on our “mistakes” forty years in to the neoliberal experiment. We must be the first picket line ever to be told to play nice, smile and never call a scab a scab.
As you amply illustrated above, old(er) women are least sympathetic to young women.
It would not a stretch to say that they are their worst enemies, even more than men.
What the young women should do is seek solidarity with their sisters (and mothers, grannies & aunts) in a unique cohort, not seen since preBronze Age.
Control their own choices, especially fertility and dispense their favour to those males suited to domestication, if only as a buffer against the brutish.
I’d written my reply and then wasn’t going to bother posting it, Loki. You get like that when acknowledging the social attitudes that have existed since before you were born and still exist to this day are dismissed as “bigotry” on your part. Anyway, here it is below.
Sorry, Loki, I have to disagree. Unless older women start sexually assaulting and harassing the younger women, they can’t supplant Public Enemy Number One. They just can’t. 😉
Things are changing, just not fast enough. It’s never fast enough. They say sunlight makes the best disinfectant. Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins have provided so much sunlight it’s harder and harder for the sort of attitudes I mentioned to be maintained, including by older women. Before, they could tell themselves their own daughters and grand daughters who find themselves in the unhappy company of the 53% of women who have been sexually harassed or the 17% who have suffered sexual violence were somehow aberrations- true victims- the exceptions that prove the rule.
I completely understand where these attitudes come from. I started work in the early 80s. They were the social backdrop of my life, too. We were raised with them and there was a (completely false) sense of security in the idea that if you conducted yourself like a “good girl” no harm could possibly come to you. Of course, the flip side was if you got yourself raped, it was because you were leading him on/ drunk / “easy”/ dressed provocatively- ie a “bad girl”. We call it victim blaming now and it is , but I think it had more to do with trying to give women and girls a sense of agency and safety at the time – while simultaneously giving men a get out of jail free card.
Immerse yourself in the books, films, magazines, newspapers and advertising from the 60s, 70s and 80s for awhile and you’ll see where the attitudes come from. The “romantic” rape scene from the Poldark series comes to mind, and the one from Gone With The Wind, decades before. You’ll find movie scenes of alpha males hitting women, too. Good times. And yes, these attitudes- stereotypes- gender portrayals- aren’t prevalent today, but they were in the formative years of men and women who vote conservatively. Data shows conservative voters are older.
A modern twist on putting all the agency back on the woman is telling her she has to “Establish her boundaries”. That’s what one of my 60 + male colleagues came out with after I disclosed I copped repeated sexual touching and harassment from a client over a 9 hour shift.
Old attitudes die hard. After all, it took a long time to put them there.
The 2017 National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS) estimated that, of Australians aged 16 and over:
• 1 in 5 (19%) were unaware that non-consensual sex in marriage is against the law
• 1 in 10 (11%) believed that women were ‘probably lying’ about sexual assault if they did not report it straightaway
• 2 in 5 (42%) agreed that ‘it was common for sexual assault accusations to be used as a way of getting back at men’
• 1 in 3 (33%) believed that ‘rape resulted from men not being able to control their need for sex’
• 1 in 8 (13%) agreed that a man is justified in having non-consensual sex if the woman initiated intimacy in a scenario where a couple had just met, and 1 in 7 (15%) agreed this was justified in a scenario where the couple were married and the woman initiated intimacy (Webster et al. 2018).
https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/0375553f-0395-46cc-9574-d54c74fa601a/aihw-fdv-5.pdf.aspx?inline=true
Look at the second last point on that list. That’s where the men of goodwill, “the males suited to domestication” you mention ( you make ‘em sound like cattle! rolls eyes) are key. I reckon it would be really helpful if they’d correct mistakes like that point and the one above it.
Kathy, thank you for your thoughtful response. I agree that you understand my concerns though I think you might have missed some implications. Thank you for what you said about women’s issues being humanistic first and last: that’s the first time I’ve read it in Crikey comments, other than from my own keyboard. Much respect.
But on to what you might have overlooked… You wrote: I think if you looked at the demographic of women who still support Morrison in spite of it all, you’ll find your answer.
Actually, I didn’t accept money to publish an article on women’s issues and haven’t opined on the motives of the women who have or continued to support Mr Morrison, so that suggestion properly belongs to Leslie. After all, it was she who accepted payment for a poorly-researched and ill-constructed article that blithely disrespected both her subject and her readers. Hers was the duty of care.
However, I already did seek to get some sense of what concerns female coalition supporters currently have, just to satisfy my own interest.
The best source of that information is likely ABC’s Vote Compass, and the outsourcer who gathers and analyses this data (the Canadian McMaster University spinoff Vox Pop labs) hasn’t yet shared their processed data, and I’m not clear on whether they ever shall (they should: if it’s paid for and promoted by the ABC then it should be public domain. I’d love to dig into it.)
You added: Many of the other women will be older, indoctrinated with decades of “she was asking for it” because of the way she was dressed, flirting etc.
If you don’t have data to support these conjectures then I’d suggest that you may be basing your opinion on media stereotypes and ideological bigotry instead.
If you’re willing to go out and get data to test your hypotheses, then that’s a different matter. Otherwise I’d suggest that a more respectful position is the one I take, and that’s to say ‘I don’t know until someone systematically asks.’
This links back to my underlying point about the self-satisfied bigotry in left-wing moral postures. The assumption of being right unless proven wrong is not consistent with respect for any humanistic issue: certainly not for women’s thoughts and needs, which we have already agreed must transcend assumptions and political preferences.
Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. For example, the more prominent teals like Stegall, Spender, and Tink all have female equality policy platforms despite playing to centre-right electorates. None seems to be disrespecting the political views of the electorates they are campaigning in, despite those electorates being largely coalition-voting.
So Kathy, at the moment I think they’re doing a better job of respecting their female constituents and fellow citizens than are Leslie — or you.
Which is why I posted in these comments. I’m inviting Leslie and fellow readers who may share her views to wake up and catch up.
The belief that people always vote in their own best interests is a convenient fiction comparable to the “rational” consumer choice in conventional economic theory. They assume “perfect knowledge” of all factors relevant to a vote or purchase. Some recent theorists have recognised these assumptions are so flawed that their failures have arguably contributed to many of the social inequities and human rights abuses still prevalent in today’s democratic societies.
Salamander wrote: The belief that people always vote in their own best interests is a convenient fiction
Sal, are you advancing the proposition that the 29% female approval rating Morrison still retained on May-9 this year is nearly all explained by ignorance and delusion?
If so then can you support that with data?
I’d welcome a researched data argument, but that’s not the argument Leslie made: hers was more an appeal to the identity fallacy, that one left-wing female journalist can speak for all women regardless of politics without even consulting them.
Not being a political scientist I am not up on their current research methods or the types of data they collect. But I think it unlikely that merely “consulting” voters would provide information more enlightening than standard surveys and focus groups. The measurement of ignorance and delusion is possible of course but considerably more complex, cross-disciplinary and certainly at present very funding-challenged given the current state of academia and political interference in research priorities. So I think we can forget that for the time being.
In principle though, what further evidence is required that under certain conditions people will vote against their own best interests – en masse and systematically – given the current state of the Republican Party in the US and the threat of a Trump reprise? Some, but thankfully by no means all as yet of the likely enabling conditions that prevail there can also be found here. Would/do they apply to women’s issues? Well, Roe vs Wade down the tubes probably clinches that.
Salamander wrote: I think it unlikely that merely “consulting” voters would provide information more enlightening than standard surveys and focus groups.
Sal, a focus group is a form of consulting anyway, but the number of people involved (typically 8-10 per group) is not statistically significant. It’s more used for qualitative understanding than quantitative insights. By contrast, a periodic opinion poll like Newspoll or Essential might involve some thousands of respondents, and is generally considered significant because of the way they sample.
Yet a poll like ABC’s Vote Compass can see over a million responses: far more than those normally sourced by Newspoll, Essential etc… It asks a reasonably extensive set of questions too about what concerns voters and where there confidence is or is not (hence, ‘approval ratings’ along with point-in-time voting intentions.) It also segments by self-identified age, sex and geography, so it’s not usually too hard to attach opinions to trust to demographics and thus develop some decent insights.
So useful data are often available, and people who offer opinions without even checking the data are favouring prejudices and self-importance over evidence.
There’s no reason to favour such views with our attention, and no professional ethics in a journalist promoting such ad-hoc pap.
I hope this helps.
Why is it that until very recent times, the fact that a woman had been raped wasn’t alleged, just the identity of the pepetrator? This alteration is extremely biased against the victim, in a system already weighted extremely in favour of the perpetrator. (see statistics of reporting and conviction rates)
Numerous times problems have been found with the process for victims, with failures to be taken seriously more common than not, but this seems to have escaped whichever entity is responsible for this change in use of language, it seems deliberate. A pushback against recent stirrings against the inherent failure of the system for this type of crime?
I was thinking along those line too. Isn’t this a legal issue? Where are the good lawyers when you need them?
Perhaps Morrison’s last throw of the dice, will be the Coalition Election launch on Sunday night.
Morrison on stage backed by all the Coalition women who support him in parliament.
Ann Rushton, Sarah Henderson, Karen Andrews, Jane Hume, the Sport Rorter and the lady from Sydney who follows him around angry at Trans gender Children. I apologise if I have left out any dried on ladies from the coalition, feel free to add yourself to the list.
Hmmm…‘dried on ladies’…ah yes, yet another new low in soft pap prog ‘not misogyny at all’ rhetoric. As I said elsewhere:
#MeToo just…doesn’t do irony.
Let who is without sin cast the first stone, Jack.
Seems to me every time “women’s issues” are raised, the line in the sand is drawn, but now it’s “not all men” on one side and everybody else on the other, at least on the leftish side of the beach.
Men of good will sit on the “not all men” side and seem to scan the BTL comments apparently for the express purpose of correcting women. I had one tell me the other day to “aim it in the right direction kathy aim it at superficial patronising creeps who treat you like infantile natural-born victims, without agency or brains” when I’d had a shot at “Smirko”. Clearly, I was having a shot at Scott Morrison, who’s infamous for his smirks, but no. A “not all men” man must have decided I was having a go at him and all the other men, so he corrected me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncsCBhyHwss
The trouble is, while ever “not all men” exists as a concept, a hell of a lot of men who most certainly do not belong there will hide beneath your skirts, gentlemen. Haven’t you wondered why the assault rates against women are statistically so high, yet none of you know an abusive male? Haven’t you wondered how the child sexual assault rate can be so high and the majority of perpetrators male, yet none of you know any?
I really don’t know how we get past this division, but we need to. I do know I’m at the stage where I’m so sick of men telling me how I should express my anger I’m considering whether I’ll bother contributing BTL to articles like this in future. It’s happened too often for too long. I’m really tired of being told my anger that workplace sexual harassment and assault didn’t end with my generation of women and my daughter-in-law’s still copping it almost daily at work is “feminist ideology”- she’s an RN and male patients do like to “go the grope”. So do some of my clients. I’m sick and tired of my anger being delegitimised.
I’m also angry and absolutely terrified nothing much will change for my two little grand daughters at this rate.
I look back wistfully at the times of great labour advances in our past. Times of strikes. Times of turbulence and anger, even violence. How times have changed. How lucky those workers were not to have half the population “mansplaining”their rage to them: they’d have been so demoralised, so deflated, they’d have got nothing done. What a win for the status quo that would have been. What a win for the status quo it is this time round.